Floating Staircase

by Ronald Malfi

  The kitchen fell silent. All I could hear was the ticking of the wall clock behind my brother’s head. It sounded like industrial machinery.

  “I want you to really listen to me good, Bro, all right?” Adam leaned farther over the table, closing the distance between us. To my horror, he looked close to tears. “This isn’t a book. This is real life. Whatever puzzle you’ve been trying to work out, well, I’m telling you, there ain’t nothing there.”

  Angered and frustrated, I could only sit slouched in my chair, my arms folded protectively over my chest, one leg bouncing spasmodically on the floor. Once more I was that punk kid, pouting in the principal’s office.

  Adam chewed on his lower lip. It was something he had always done in his youth when he found himself in a difficult spot. “I was putting off saying this to you,” he said eventually, “because I wasn’t sure how to say it. But I’m just gonna say it anyway. Because you’re not getting any better.”

  “You make me sound like a heroin addict.”

  “You’re acting like one.”

  “Go to hell,” I said, kicking my chair back and rising.

  “No,” he said calmly. “Sit down. You want to pull the tough-guy routine, fine, but do it after we’re done here. This is important.”

  “I’m sick of you telling me what to do.”

  Adam took a deliberate breath and said, “Sit down for Jodie’s sake, then.”

  Fuming, I sat back down.

  “Jodie’s upset. I’m talking really upset. She’s worried you’re falling into another depressive state, just like after Mom died—”

  “Jodie’s got her nose in too many psychology textbooks,” I growled.

  “—and just like how you were after Kyle’s death.”

  “Jodie didn’t know me then.”

  “But I did. I saw how it decimated you.”

  There was a burning in my face. My eyes itched.

  Adam sighed. “You’re making up something because you so desperately need to be the hero.”

  Curling my toes in my boots, I turned away from him . . . and found myself staring at a framed photo of us from his wedding sitting on a shelf. I couldn’t wrench my gaze from it. It ridiculed me.

  “You’re chasing this thing, hoping that if you fix it, you’ll absolve yourself of your guilt over Kyle.”

  I felt my whole body flinch.

  “You can’t undo what happened to our brother,”

  Adam said flatly. “No matter how many imaginary murders you solve, no matter how many books you write about it, you’re still powerless to change what happened to him.” He paused. “And now you’re letting your marriage fall apart in order to fix your own mistakes of the past. You’re caught in a cycle here. Can’t you see that?”

  I couldn’t answer.

  “Travis?” he said, and his voice was impossibly distant now. He was talking from the moon.

  I turned away from the picture, a noxious soup broiling in my stomach.

  Adam stood, stacking the photos into a neat pile. Then he glanced at the wall clock, biting his lip again. “Go home. Think about what I’ve said. If any of it makes sense after you sober up, maybe you should give Jodie a call in the morning. All right?”

  Numbly, I nodded. I stood and collected the photos from the table. As I followed Adam to the front door, my boots squelching muddy tracks in the hallway, I curled the photos into a tube. My palms were sweating.

  “Go,” he said, opening the door. “Get some sleep.”

  I stepped into the dark, my shadow stretching before me in the panel of soft rectangular light that spilled out from the open doorway, and hoofed down the icy driveway. The sound of Adam’s door closing echoed across the cul-de-sac.

  I was shaking.

  It was a mistake to move here. We should have stayed in North London. My relationship with Adam has always been better by telephone.

  Crossing the cul-de-sac, I pulled my coat tighter about my body and strode with my head down against the biting wind. Off to my right, someone flashed a pair of headlights, temporarily paralyzing me in the middle of the street like a deer. I could make out the bracketed shape of an old two-tone pickup idling silently against the curb. I could smell the fetid exhaust pumping from the tailpipe as I approached the driver’s side of the vehicle.

  The driver rolled the window down.

  Sitting behind the wheel was David Dentman.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Get in the truck,” Dentman muttered offhandedly. The only light inside the cab was from the burning ember of a cigarette.

  “What are you doing here?” There was an icy finger tracing the contours of my spine.

  “Looking for you.” He leaned across the passenger seat and opened the passenger door. The interior dome light came on, sending inky pools of shadow running down his face.

  “No. We can talk out here.”

  “Christ, Glasgow, don’t be such a pussy. I’m not gonna hurt you. Get in the truck.” He sounded disgusted with the whole ordeal.

  It was a stupid damn thing—one of those stupid damn things that cause audiences in movie theaters to shout less than flattering names at the ignorant but well-meaning protagonist—but I had my reasons. So I walked around the front of David’s pickup, feeling the heat of the headlamps wash over me as I passed, and got into the passenger seat. All too aware of the photographs I was carrying, I held my breath; rolled into a cone, they couldn’t have been more conspicuous if they’d been adorned with Christmas lights.

  The vehicle’s interior smelled of turpentine and tobacco and whiskey and sweat. This close, I could smell Dentman, too, and it was a strong, masculine, canine smell—almost feral.

  Dentman dropped the truck into gear. The engine roared and caused the entire chassis to shudder. It sounded like there was an army tank under the hood.

  “I thought you just wanted to talk,” I said.

  The pickup’s headlights cleaved into the darkness as we pulled out into the street and headed for the intersection. Watching as the speedometer climbed well past fifty, fifty-five, sixty, I reached for the seat belt but found none. Yeah, this is smart.

  Dentman slouched in the driver’s seat, huge and filling it completely, both his big, meaty paws gripping the steering wheel, his head tilted slightly down while watching the blackened, narrow roadway from beneath the cliff of his Neanderthal brow.

  “This is a residential neighborhood,” I reminded him.

  His profile affected the faintest smirk.

  Wind whipped in through the open driver’s side window, freezing the air and emitting an aboriginal hum as it funneled through the tube of photographs I held. I tried to will the photos away into nonexistence by mere thought. Please, please, please.

  Dentman cast an empty stare at the photos and, presumably annoyed by the sound, rolled up his window. “You stink like a distillery,” he commented after a moment, actually sniffing the air like a bloodhound.

  The pickup bucked along the road, the engine furious under the hood. I counted the seconds until the doors came loose on their hinges.

  “What do you want?” I said.

  “Open the glove compartment.”

  “No, thanks. I’m fine.”

  “Open it.”

  Hesitantly, I opened the glove compartment. The door dropped like a mouth, and a little orange light spilled out onto my lap. There was only one item inside, and I had to blink several times to convince myself that it was actually what I knew it to be. “I take it you don’t want an autograph,” I said, staring at the paperback copy of The Ocean Serene.

  “I highlighted my favorite paragraphs,” Dentman said.

  “Is that right?” Heavy with sarcasm.

  I opened the book and flipped through the pages. What moonlight there was allowed me to see the highlighted portions of the text. I stopped on one of the pages and read it. Then I closed the book, pushing it back inside the open glove compartment, and stared at Dentman’s sharp profile, outlined in phosphorescent moonli
ght. “I’m flattered you’re such an avid fan, but where the hell are we going?”

  “Tell me something,” Dentman said, his tone almost conversational as we barreled through the streets. “Whose life is that book about?”

  “Huh?”

  “That’s what you do, isn’t it? Steal people’s lives? Cheapen their tragedies for the sake of entertainment? For the sake of your bank account?”

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

  “What is it you think about me? What is it you think about my family?”

  “You’ve lost your mind,” I told him.

  “Reach under your seat.”

  “No. Enough bullshit. What’s this all about?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Look, I don’t know what you’re getting at. If this is about the box I brought by your house, I thought we’d already—”

  “Reach under your seat,” Dentman repeated with more than just a hint of irritation in his voice.

  Reluctantly, I leaned forward and slid one hand beneath my seat. My breath was rattling in my throat. I patted around the stiff carpeting, not knowing what to expect, what I was searching for . . . and then the tips of my fingers touched something. I took it out and put it in my lap, blessedly covering the photographs with it. Looking at it, I felt something thick and wet roll over in the pit of my stomach, and I thought I would throw up. My hands were shaking, and I couldn’t keep my teeth from vibrating in my head. In my throat, my breath temporarily seized up. I prayed for unconsciousness.

  On my lap was my missing writing notebook.

  There were a million questions—a trillion questions—shooting through my brain, but my mouth, that traitorous cretin, would not formulate the words.

  Dentman maneuvered the shuddering pickup straight down Main Street and past the depressed little shops of rural Westlake, now dark and closed. Only the shimmering pink neon lights of Tequila Mockingbird were visible, radiating with a dull sodium throb in the darkness. Ahead, through the windshield, the night was a tangible thing—a black velvet cloak draped over the valley.

  “W-where did you get this?” I stammered, finding my voice at last. My mind reeling, I felt the cold cloak of fear settle over me the moment I realized that I had never changed the locks on the doors upon moving into the house on Waterview Court. My God, I thought, unable to move, unable to breathe. I couldn’t pull my gaze from the notebook—the camouflaged black-and-white cover, the string-bound spine, the frayed edges.

  We bumped along the roadway, leaving Westlake behind us like a distant memory; all that existed of the town was the spatter of fading lights in the pickup’s rearview mirror.

  “You son of a bitch,” I muttered, lifting the notebook. It weighed two hundred pounds. “You broke into my house.”

  “I did no such thing.” He gunned the truck to seventy miles an hour. I could feel the tires spinning over black ice. “Actually, you left it at my house. In that box you brought over.”

  The world struggled to remain in focus.

  “You been asking around town about me,” Dentman said. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

  “I can explain.”

  “You can explain why you’ve got my family’s name written in that notebook of yours?”

  “It’s going to sound strange, but yes, I can explain all of it.”

  “I don’t like it.” His attention was fixated on the darkness ahead. There were no houses here—no lights and certainly no signs of civilization—only the black-on-black wash of heavy trees on either side of the truck. “I don’t like you sniffing around in my private life, my private business.” He paused, perhaps for dramatic effect. “I don’t like what you did to my sister even more.”

  I choked down a hard lump of spit. “I didn’t do anything to her.”

  “You got her all stirred up.” Denton faced me. His eyes were hollow pits in the darkness. I could smell cigarette smoke coming through his pores. “She loved that boy. It broke her heart what happened to him. What kind of sick fuck follows her to a new town to revisit such a tragedy?”

  “That wasn’t my intention.”

  “Oh,” he countered, “I know your intention. I seen your books and how you like to exploit people’s tragedies.”

  “They’re just books. They’re not real.” I gripped the dashboard with one hand. “Please watch the road.”

  He shook his head like he was disappointed in me. “She told me about you. Said you talked about the boy. Told her she could have all that stuff back if she came out to the house.”

  “No. I never said that. I never told her to come out to the house.”

  “So you’re saying my little sister’s lying to me?”

  “The road,” I groaned. “Watch it.”

  Ahead, the road forked. Dentman took a right without signaling. We were nearly riding on two wheels. “The hell’s the matter with you? You sick or something?”

  “It was all a misunderstanding.”

  “What about the stuff in your notebook there? That all a misunderstanding, too?”

  “Just let me explain—”

  “Oh yeah,” David said. “I can see how that could happen. A misunderstanding. Sure.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “What’s the matter?” He motioned toward the open glove compartment. The paperback vibrated against the hanging mouth of it as the pickup gathered speed. “You write this scary stuff, but I guess you’re just a shitless little weasel in real life.”

  “Stop the truck.”

  “That makes you a coward in my book.”

  “David—”

  “Not facing a situation, not confronting it—that makes you a coward.”

  “Stop the truck. I want to get out.”

  “Get out? Now? I thought you wanted to learn all about my family. For your book.”

  “I’m not writing a book. This is just—this was—it’s my private business—”

  “Which involves my private business,” Dentman said, his voice rising. “Which involves my family’s private business.”

  “Just tell me where we’re going.”

  “I’m taking you to meet someone.”

  “I don’t want to meet anyone. Let me out of the goddamn truck.”

  Ahead, I noticed the glimmer of lights through the trees. Fresh hope welled up inside me. I wasn’t familiar with where we were, but at least there were other people around.

  If Adam wanted proof that David Dentman was a homicidal maniac, he’d certainly have it when they found my body torn to bits on the side of this wooded highway tomorrow morning . . .

  “I’ll say,” he went on, the accelerator flat on the floor now, “you’ve got me made out pretty colorful in that notebook of yours. Call me a murderer and everything.”

  “It’s not you.”

  “No? Used my name.”

  “If you’re too fucking stupid to understand what I’m trying to tell you—”

  The pickup squealed as Dentman slammed on the brakes, causing the rear of the truck to fishtail. Forward momentum drove me into the dashboard. The Fourth of July was going on somewhere at the back of my brain. Dentman corrected the fishtailing until we leveled out. He muttered something to himself about nearly missing a turn as he rotated the steering wheel.

  “You’re a fucking psychopath,” I said, pulling myself back into my seat.

  To my astonishment, Dentman laughed. The sound was like a thousand barking dogs. “You know what I think?” He tapped his temple. “I think you’re blind and I think you’re ignorant. I think you’re a selfish son of a bitch. If you keep on nosing in other people’s business, you’ll eventually get what’s coming to you.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “You have no idea how you upset her. You have no idea what it was like trying to get her through that. You stupid motherfucker, she loved that boy.”

  “What about you? How’d you feel about him?”

  “I don’t feel like answering any of y
our goddamn questions,” he snarled. “Wind up in one of your shitty books.”

  “Tell me what you did to him.”

  Again, Dentman stopped the truck—this time with more care. The pickup idled in the middle of the road, the engine ticking down around us, our mingling respiration fogging up the windshield. The residential lights I’d spotted, which I’d hoped would prove my salvation, were still too far away. Here, alone with a child killer, I was surrounded by trees, by shadows and darkness and night.

  “Get out,” Dentman breathed. His eyes were small and a bit far apart but like two burning embers affixed to the carved stone face of an idol. His teeth were little and evenly spaced. He had thin lips that curled when he was angry.

  “Was it an accident or did you do it on purpose?” I said. It was like listening to someone else using my voice. I couldn’t stop myself. “Maybe it was an accident. Maybe you panicked.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Just like you wrote in your little notebook. Now get out of my truck.”

  Not needing a third invitation, I popped the door handle and dumped myself out onto the ice-slicked blacktop. Held tightly to my chest were the crime scene photos and the notebook. The night was cold and damp, but my heart was racing, and I was sweating so profusely that I hardly noticed.

  Dentman shut the truck down, then turned off the headlights. As he got out of the cab and came around the front of the vehicle, I was certain he was going to pull a handgun from his waistband and blow me away right here on the side of the road. I could easily imagine my blood staining the snow a deep crimson hue, the liberated crime scene photographs fluttering like tumbleweeds down the empty single-lane blacktop all the way into the next town.

  He came up to me and grabbed my elbow. “Come on.” He tried to jerk me toward the shoulder of the road.

  “Where are we going?”

  “This is what it’s all about, isn’t it? The climax of your fucking story? This is what the readers have been waiting for, right?”

  I couldn’t stop my feet: they moved of their own will. Beside me, Dentman was huge, and it was like being ushered by a giant stone bell tower. He was breathing strenuously, and I could feel his heartbeat through the tightened grip of his palm around my elbow.